Great Wall of China

(Newser) -
It's not quite as bad as peeing on the Alamo , but Bobby Brown of the Houston Rockets is still getting a hard time from commenters in China after leaving graffiti on the country's Great Wall. Brown, who played in China for three seasons, not only tagged the wall...
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A 'wild' section of the wall now looks more like a road

(Newser) -
It may be the worst repair job ever: What began as an effort to patch up a crumbling 700-year-old portion of China's Great Wall ended up as an unsightly trail of what looks like smooth gray concrete. CNN reports the patch job took place in 2014, but after a...
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Wow

(Newser) -
Jeb Corliss proved Sunday that his nickname, "Human Arrow," is quite accurate. The 40-year-old daredevil jumped from a helicopter 6,000 feet in the air while wearing a wingsuit, then flew through the air at 120mph toward an apple-sized target on the Great Wall of China—a target...
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A report out of the country puts a number on just how much no longer exists

(Newser) -
In a 2008 article headlined "The Great Wall of China Is Under Siege," Smithsonian reported that "no one knows just how much of the wall has already been lost." A Sunday report in the Beijing Times changed that. It reported via the State Administration of Cultural...
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Hint: Beijing is not trying to make its neighbors happy

(Newser) -
China is no stranger to herculean feats of construction , and its current one is both fascinating and more than a little controversial: As the New York Times reports, Beijing is building itself islands. One, dubbed Mischief Reef, is an actual reef that's part of the Spratly Islands in the...
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Archaeologist Gary Feinman is studying an even earlier one

(Newser) -
As NPR tells it, archaeologist Gary Feinman was "simply walking around eastern China's Shandong province" on a hunt for pottery shards when he found something much, well, greater: a rammed earth wall that reached as high as 15 feet in places. That there had been a wall built...
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No word on whether he had a permit

(Newser) -
Well, why would Justin Bieber have any respect for one of the most culturally significant creations in the world? The Biebs' new music video for his song "All That Matters" has leaked, and it was filmed at the Great Wall of China. There’s no word on if the...
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A day after forcing them to run after him while he skateboarded

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One nice thing about being Justin Bieber: You don't have to actually climb the steps of famous landmarks, because that's what bodyguards are for. Bieber is currently on tour in China, and pictures emerged on social media of the pop star being carried to the top of the...
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Beijing says the wall is more that twice as long as estimated in 2009

(Newser) -
Last month, China adjusted its estimate of the Great Wall's length to 13,171 miles—more than half the Earth's circumference and 2.5 times the length estimated in 2009, as China found vast new swaths as it measured it for the first time. (The measurement considers how...
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William Lindesay got an assist from Google Earth

(Newser) -
The Great Wall of China is bigger than we thought. An undiscovered stretch of the wall was located last fall by a British explorer in the deserts of Mongolia, reports the Telegraph . Carbon testing reveals the 62-mile section, made of earth and branches, has been standing since the 11th or...
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President visits landmark, heads to South Korea

(Newser) -
Following in the footsteps of Richard Nixon and every president since then, Barack Obama today wound up his visit to China with a stop at the Great Wall, where he stoked his hosts' pride in ancient Chinese civilization by reflecting on the wall's enduring nature. "It's magical," Obama...
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High-tech study finds hundreds of hidden miles

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Chinese scientists have discovered huge sections of the Great Wall of China that have been concealed by sandstorms over time, reports the BBC. A high-tech study using infrared and GPS technology found that the barrier built to protect against northern invaders is up to 1000 miles longer than experts previously...
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Online poll spreads the wealth to South America, Asia

(Newser) -
The largest online poll ever conducted wrapped up yesterday, and today the results became official. The seven wonders of the modern world, which were announced in Portugal, include an Asian engineering triumph and a South American religious monument, but not the Great Pyramid of Giza—the Egyptian government refused to...
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